Local business women unite together

The project was a look book touting Bridgeville’s MoZaic Boutique’s spring styles, but the collaboration that went into it was a joint effort of several local business women working together.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, women will account for more than half of the 9.72 million new small business jobs expected to be created in the next five years – good news for women, and bad at the same time, as they will be giving each other quite the competition.

“What is so unique about this effort is that even though it is such a competitive marketplace out there, these local women business owners were excited to come together and help each other out,” said photographer Tammy Anthos.

The look book is just the first result of the ladies’ collaboration; the group has agreed to work together in various capacities until February 2014.

“This project does have a year long story, what we’ve decided to do is get the look book done for me, then I can help them back – photographers can come to MoZaic to shoot my products, which they will use to promote their photography,” MoZaic owner Nancy Gilmore said. “And, they will send clients to my store to borrow merchandise for their photo shoots. Whatever evolves from that, is icing on the cake.”

For the look book, the photographers themselves stepped from behind the camera and served as models. Tammy Anthos of Ltrs4u, Jennifer Churches of Jennifer Churches Photography, Robin Eiszler of Robin Kimberly Photography, Leeann Golish of The Leeann Marie Collective and Pittsburgh Fashion Blog, Kristi Ternullo of Kristi Ternullo Photography and Gina Wade of Gina Wade Photography also worked collectively with Gilmore on the design of the piece.

“It was definitely a very interesting challenge, to have all of our creative talents and rein them all in,” Gilmore said. “Everyone had such good and big ideas – the biggest problem was trying to put all of that creativity into a time frame and manageable to do list.”

The ladies celebrated the (first) final product with a launch party and networking event at MoZaic. Gilmore said the evening hosted about 25 women, a mixture of those involved in the project, family, friends and store regulars. With any luck, connections were made and even more local ladies will be teaming up in the name of entrepreneurship.

Katie Green

Editorial Director of Niche Publications

Katie Green graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003 with a degree in English writing. She was editor of The Almanac since 2012 before becoming Editorial Director of Niche Publications in 2016.